Sierra Leone Is No Place To Be Young

By Jan Goodwin

Published: February 14, 1999

Virtually unnoticed in the catalogue of horrors emanating from Sierra Leone's brutal civil war is the forcible conscription of children, some as young as 7 years old. Kidnapped by rebel forces or drawn into the Government's army, they are forced to become soldiers, human shields, spies, porters and sex slaves.

By some estimates, children now make up between 40 and 50 percent of the insurgents' total force strength of around 15,000. On the Government side, officials admit, children compose a fifth of the 25,000-strong Civil Defense Forces. In Africa, child soldiers have fought or are fighting in Angola, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, the Sudan, Congo and Uganda, as well as Sierra Leone. There are now an estimated 300,000 child soldiers worldwide, a figure that has increased by one-sixth during the last three years.

The Government justifies its use of child soldiers as a kind of social-welfare program. ''A lot of these kids witnessed the slaughter of their parents and were so traumatized that they were living like beasts in the bush,'' says Sam Hinga Norman, the Deputy Minister of Defense. ''We had to catch them and bring them back into the fold as human beings.'' For the rebels, who think nothing of hacking off the hands and feet of civilians, the use of child warriors needs no justification.

Following are the stories of three children, all victims to one extent or another of the terrible fighting. The children's names have been withheld at the request of unicef, which provided the accompanying photographs -- which depict children other than those discussed -- on that condition. --------------------

M.G. was 10 years old when he was first forced to point his Kalashnikov at a human being and pull the trigger. He was a fourth grader walking to school when he was abducted by the Revolutionary United Front, one of two allied rebel groups sowing terror in Sierra Leone.

''The rebel camp was not far from my home,'' the boy, now 13, says. ''The commander brought 10 people from my village, men, women and children. He assembled everyone and told the prisoners they were going to die. They called to me by name, crying, 'M., talk for us.' I knew them all. The children were my friends. I pleaded with the commander. He told me: 'Kill them. If you don't, I will kill you.' He put his gun to my head. My body began to shake. I fired, and kept firing. I watched them fall. Their limbs were twitching. It took them a long time to die -- about three minutes. Then I vomited. It was the first time I killed.''

He no longer knows how many people he has slaughtered, how many atrocities he has committed or witnessed. ''You don't count the people you kill,'' he says. ''You just see the bodies on the ground afterward.'' He revisits them often in his frequent nightmares. ''I see them dead all around me.''

It wasn't that long ago, of course, that M.G. was their worst nightmare. ''People are more afraid of these armed children than they are of mature soldiers,'' says Salieu Jalloh, a 38-year-old father of two from Freetown, who has lost 10 members of his family in rebel attacks. ''These kids are very scary, more erratic and more violent than most fighters. They obey any order, no matter how brutal.''

There is a certain twisted logic to child conscription, Jalloh, who works with former child soldiers, admits. ''Unlike adults, children don't negotiate with the enemy or take bribes. They're more loyal. They don't form factions or take up arms against you, and they're more easily controlled. Kids just want to be loved, if not by a parent, then a rebel commander. They also come cheap. Child soldiers don't demand wages.''

But they are now beginning to ask for something else: their lives back. As M.G. recounts what he misses most, he sounds like a child who has been away at summer camp: his friends, his family, his dog. ''He was only a puppy when I left -- we played a lot together,'' he says. ''Do you think he will remember me?'' He wonders what class he would be in today if he were still in school. He had just passed his fifth-grade entrance exams when he was abducted.

Returning to that life won't be easy. While he is an obedient little boy who wants to please, to the people of his village he is a rebel murderer. When he tried to return last spring, he was almost bludgeoned to death. He was saved by soldiers from Ecomog, the Nigerian-dominated intervention force that backs Sierra Leone's legitimately elected Government. But by the time the attack was halted, he had lost the sight in his right eye. The boy has yet to be told that his 19-year-old brother was lynched by the community and that his grandfather was beaten and driven from the village.

Not surprisingly, many child warriors simply refuse to go home. ''They tell me: 'I will be killed. I can't go,' '' says the Rev. Joseph Berton, head of the Family Homes Movement, an agency working with child war victims. ''Many don't remember their families. Some are young enough to have spent half their lives with the rebels. Should we compel them to return? And if they do, will they always be marked as 'the boy who killed my father' or 'the boy who amputated my arms'?